It is now Saturday and Tek Week 2008 has drawn to a close. It started out a little tumultuous with Hurricane Gustov causing havoc in the Carribbean. But as the winds moved on into the Gulf, memories were being made in Grand Cayman.
My cadre of students finished their courses. Ray Turek completed his Normoxic Trimix course and may have been convinced that CCR was the only way to dive deeper because you could stay longer. Of course, he’ll now have to explain the need to his wife and then decide on which unit is right for him. He certainly got to see a variety of units here this week. Kim Smith from KISS rebreathers was here as was Peter Den Hann from Silent Diving Systems the North American distributer of the Evolution and Inspiration rebreathers. Paul Rainmaker, designer of the rEvo rebreather was here showing off his new rebreather. Then there were the divers themselves sporting a number of units including the Sentinel from VR technologies, several Inspirations, Evolutions, Evolution Plus’, an Optima, a Titan or two, a Megalodon, a few KISS Classics, a KISS Sport, and some rEvo’s.
While Ray was completing his Normoxic course, Madison Lee and Mark Nawman were working on their Trimix Course. They ended their training on Friday with a 300 foot dive near Dolphin Drop-Off in the west bay. All three of them received preliminary certificates at the closing session on Friday evening.
The training was a minor part of the week at least for me. The best part was the diving. Due to the winds from Gustov and Hanna, our diving was primarily off the West Bay portion of the island. Of course, this is not a real problem since these walls are beautiful and the aquatic life is abundant.
Diving deep in Grand Cayman is a real treat because not only are the deep portions of the walls beautiful, but your decompression is spent on the walls as well. This makes for a more entertaining stay and a more relaxed dive.
Coming up the coral canyons at Big tunnels treated us to more than 14 lobsters milling about and two chasing one another around the reef. In Orange Canyon and at both Leslie’s Curl and Dolphin drop off we were treated to exhibitions by the ultimate free-divers – the turtles. Rays and sharks greeted the divers on most dives and even the sharks made an appearance.
All in all it was a fun event and we had some great dives. The staff at Cobalt Coast and DiveTech work hard to make these events special and they succeeded once again.
See the press release at https://www.caymannetnews.com/news-9858–1-1—.html
